Plan for a Migration to Windows Server 2008 R2 - Page 2

Although an in-place upgrade can be done from Windows Server 2003 or 2008 x64 to Windows Server 2008 R2, but
depending on the network environment, this could end up very messy. It would be better to migrate to a new hardware
or a virtualized environment if the IT environment is complex.

If an in-place upgrade is preferred, the general steps are:

Duplicate the source server onto a testing environment.

Do an in-place upgrade on the testing server.

Test and troubleshoot the testing server if problem arises.

Do an in-place upgrade on the production server.

Migration Whitepapers

The migration process is different, depending on several factors, including:

server roles

domain controller

custom applications

services uptime

complexity of the role (clustered or geographically disbursed)

The migration process is not straightforward, so it is very important to read up on the migration guide for
each and every server role, and test it out in a testing environment before migrating a production server.

Since we will not be covering on how to do a migration for all roles and applications, the following lists will point you to the right place for the migration whitepaper.

What's Next?

Migrating to a new server is always a challenge; however Microsoft has tools ready to assist in a smooth
migration. As long as migration testing is done and migration steps are followed carefully off the whitepaper, it
should be quite a straightforward process. There are other solution accelerators
available from Microsoft, but this article only covers those needed for a successful migration to Windows Server 2008
R2.

In the next article in this series, we'll look into application compatibility, and how do we overcome those issues.